The USD$6.7 billion merger of Excite and @Home Network in 1999 became one of the largest mergers of two Internet companies at the time. @Home's high-speed Internet services and existing portal were combined with Excite's search engine and portal, with a move towards personalized web portal content following the merger.[citation needed] The new company was named "Excite@Home" (the stock symbol and the company's name in regulatory filing records remained as "At Home Corporation" (ATHM)) and, six months after the merger, Tom Jermoluk stepped down as CEO of Excite@Home. Excite’s George Bell, who was the President of the Excite division of @Home after the merger, became the new CEO of the combined Excite@Home, whilst Jermoluk remained Chairman of the Board.

Following the merger, the Excite division purchased iMall, as well as online greeting card company, Blue Mountain Arts. Excite also acquired photo sharing company Webshots. Excite furthermore paid for sponsorship of Infiniti Indy car driver Eddie Cheever, Jr., through the 2000 and 2001 racing seasons. However, the merger between Excite and @Home fell disastrously short of expectations. Online advertising revenue plummeted, while cable network ISP revenue continued to grow. On September 21, 2000, after stock value had dropped 90%, George Bell announced plans to step down as CEO within six months. On April 23, 2001, Excite@Home announced Patti S. Hart, the former CEO of Telocity, would become its third CEO in three years. In the same announcement, George Bell resigned and left the company completely. The company also reported first-quarter net loss of $61.6 million, compared with a loss of $4.6 million in the same period the prior year.

On June 11, 2001, Excite@Home announced that it had raised $100 million in financing from Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co. Part of the deal was that the loan was repayable immediately if Excite@Home stock was delisted by NASDAQ. The loan, structured as a note convertible into shares of Excite, had an interest rate of zero. By August 20 of that year, Excite@Home had replaced its auditors Ernst & Young with PricewaterhouseCoopers. This triggered a demand from Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co for the immediate repayment of $50 million in debt. Furthermore, Cox Cable and Comcast announced that they would separate from Excite@Home by the first quarter of 2002.

On September 13, 2001, Excite@Home sold Blue Mountain Arts to American Greetings for less than 5% of what it had paid less than two years earlier. On October 1, 2001, Excite@Home filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California. The company's remaining 1,350 employees were laid off over the following months. As part of the agreement, @Home's national high-speed fiber network access would be sold back to AT&T Corporation. @Home Liquidating Trust became the successor company to Excite@Home, charged with the sale of all assets of the former company.

At the end of 2001, the Webshots assets were purchased by the company's founders for $2.4 million in cash from the Bankruptcy Court.

I almost got a job with @home before that fiasco. One of the higher ups was the brother of a friend at the time. I even got to tour the datacenter and NOC.

they were assholes. There was a major outage that lasted over 3 weeks in 1998 that affected half of fremont. Hundreds were either no connection, or might get a 1kps at 3am. People of course got upset after day after day of TCI and @home reps telling us WTF are you talking about. And that was IF you get one on the phone, they had a habit of putting you on hold for an hour then hanging up. During that time the TCI rep publicly calls anybody whining about no connection as asshole hackers and pipe hogs who are getting "justice" from TCI@home's new throttling algorithms...and does so in the major local newspapers like the argus and SJ mercury news

So an IT guy affected forms a group and I join, and after enough screaming from half the subscriber base in fremont they figure they need to do some spin/damage control. Not by fixing the problem, oh no. I was one of about 50 that got the free tour of the @home offices (shiny new building with one of the first and largest color led screens on the side of the building off 101).

Then after the tour we got a dog and pony show about how great their product is, how high customer satisfaction was, yadda yadda yadda, while never ONCE mentioning or acknowledging that there was a problem with HUNDREDS of customers who had been and still were cut off from service. We all had not only had no internet for 3 weeks at that time, NOBODY in TCI or @home had even acknowledge that there was an OUTAGE. The TCI service rep kept insulting us in the newspapers calling us hackers and media hogs who deserved to get our service throttled or disconnected (andrew johnson, I still remember that cocksucker's name and his carpetbagger attitude )

Well after more heat from our user group that consisted of some high profile tech workers and a few media interviews with them, TCI@home stumbled across the thought that maybe they should recheck the main node router that all these customer's were complaining were on....especially since it was software upgraded 3 weeks previously to the exact day complaints started flooding in.

Turns out the silly assholes had fucked up the upgrade so bad that it throttled this router that served over a thousand homes to 128kps throughput both directions

it was a fiasco. Imagine a power company "upgrading your" neighborhood 10,000 volt/1200 amp transformer so that it outputs only 120v@20 amps for a 100 home neighborhood. And having the power company reps tell you you're off your nut when you tell them you can't run your toaster before the lone 40w bulb lighting the whole house dims to nothing. That's after you get them after 3 days of multiple hour holds and dropped calls. Then after 3 weeks of that you get invited for a tour of the power plant where they say how modern and cool it is, and how all their customers love doing shit like turning on the TV AND the lights at the same time. And you're asking well when the fuck will we be able to do that again?